The smell of burning rubber and the sound of screeching tyres can only mean one thing: Formula 1 is back!
The new season gets underway this weekend at Albert Park in Melbourne, and doesn’t finish until the final grand prix in Brazil at the end of November.
Throughout the year, you can follow every twist and turn of the travelling F1 circus on your Nokia. We’ve picked three F1 apps for Nokia Lumia devices and another three for Nokia Asha handsets.
F1 on Nokia Lumia
F1 Race Centre (free)
For live race day action, you’ll definitely need to install F1 Race Centre on your Lumia smartphone.
As well as at-a-glance updates to see who is winning and the other race positions, this app also has live text commentary courtesy of ESPNstar.com to keep you informed all of the key incidents.
Another nice touch is that the app integrates tweets from the major teams and F1 drivers.
F1 World Pro (£0.99)
The great strength of F1 World Pro is that it keeps you up-to-date with all the news away from the racing.
You can follow the news from a specific team, individual drivers or even from a particular circuit. These news feeds, from sources such as BBC Sport, Formula1.com and Espnf1.com update automatically in the background without the need for you to manually ‘sync’ the app.
2013 FIA Formula 1 (free)
Real Formula 1 fans can’t get enough of the huge amounts of raw data that is generated by each team. These details show you how a driver managed to gain that crucial one hundredth of a second to win the race.
This app should help to satisfy even the biggest F1 statistics geek. It will show you the race results, lap times, fastest lap and even the pit stop times. If that’s not enough, it also breaks down the qualifying sessions and provides sector-by-sector analysis of each lap.
Almost as an aside, one of my favourite features of 2013 FIA Formula 1 is the attractive display calendar feature, which gives you a countdown to the next race.
F1 on Nokia Asha
ESPNF1 (free)
For Nokia Asha devices, I would definitely start with this ESPNF1 app. As well as giving you all the information you want, it also provides a great user experience.
This app gives you access to all the latest news, live result, commentary, race summary and stats.
In addition, there are complete driver and team profiles and a season calendar.
F1 Confidential (free)
The intriguingly named F1 Confidential promises to give you ‘secrets, gossip, insider tips and confidential goings on’ directly from the pit lanes.
I’m afraid the reality is that the news is rather more conventional but this is still worth investigating all the same, as it brings in photos and F1 related video clips.
Formula Race (free)
Let’s face it, we’ve all fantasised about driving in one of the F1 cars. Unfortunately, the closest we will ever get to that is through a game.
There are plenty of racing games available in the Nokia Store but this is one of the best F1 racing simulators.
You can collect power ups to go faster (just imagine you are deploying your KERS…) and there are also different conditions for you to master. Rev those engines!
image credit: Natursports / Shutterstock.com